To test the model of cervical carcinoma being a field carcinogenic process, inducing even in normal appearing cells chromatin structural changes which can be measured by cytophotometry, we digitized populations of 50 intermediate cell nuclei in normal and abnormal cervical smears. The slides were stained with the Thionin Feulgen Congo Red stain. In a trial for sample classification we used averages and coefficients of variation per slide of 20 nuclear features. First analysis results, using the statistical pattern recognition package ISPAHAN, show differences between the classes, but the classification is difficult due to large intraclass variances. These variations might be caused by subpopulations of progressive, stable and regressive lesions in each abnormal class and (non)malignant changes in the normals. Indeed, limiting the normals to a subset of "real" normals revealed a tendency in feature space to more abnormality (distance to normals) along with the a priori classification of smears.